


Soon, or Now, or Anything

by xceru



Category: Degrassi: Next Class
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Canon Compliant, F/F, Falling In Love, Zoe POV
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-27
Updated: 2021-02-27
Packaged: 2021-03-18 06:29:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29729742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xceru/pseuds/xceru
Summary: When Zoe Rivas kisses Grace Cardinal at the end of the summer, she thinks they're starting a new chapter of their lives: as girlfriends. But when they return to school, Grace is acting distant, and Zoe is confused. What happened that made Grace change her mind?This fic follows Zoe & Grace during the first two episodes of Degrassi: Next Class with flashbacks to Summer Girls.
Relationships: Grace Cardinal/Zoë Rivas
Kudos: 2





	Soon, or Now, or Anything

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this for my roommate for her birthday and she said I should post it, so, here it is :) 
> 
> About 95% of the dialogue is pulled from the show, I just wrote Zoe's thoughts & feelings around it. There are also a few fill-in-the-gaps scenes.

**** THEN ****

When you kiss the girl you love for the first time, the memory becomes an anchor on a green screen. Zoe thinks about kissing Grace on the beach, and the Atlantic Ocean turns into the Mediterranean, the yellow Canadian sand softening into Greek white. Their outfits change: Zoe wears a bikini, then a one-piece, then a floral wrap with a lily in her hair. Grace’s hands don’t hang loosely at her side—they move from Zoe’s cheeks to her neck to her shoulders, then come to rest on her collarbone.

The kiss stays the same, barely felt. Zoe is too busy processing the fact of Grace kissing her to consider how it feels. Instead, she captures the kiss like a photo, keeps a fragment of the memory rather than feel it as it happens. It’s everything that Zoe could have dreamed, because she forms her dreams around it.

Now they were back at Degrassi, the summer of Zoe and Grace slipping firmly into the past. As much as Zoe wanted to move forward with Grace, she was scared to unfold their memories and peer at the questions inside. She preferred her inner world, where Grace certainly loved her, even if that world wasn’t real.

**** NOW ****

On the first day of school, Zoe had been waiting to text Grace for a week. When her _Hey!_ had gone unresponded for twenty-four hours, Zoe was determined not to give up. On the third day of school, she texted, _Weird that I haven’t seen you yet_. Again, no response. When Friday came and went with nothing from Grace—no texts, no run-ins in the halls, no sitting together in class—Zoe came up with excuses. _She’s focusing on school. She’s trying to think of the right thing to say. She’s scared of her feelings for me._ Each thought barely rose before it fell.

Zoe tried to stay busy with Tristan’s presidential campaign. When he’d told her that Miles was throwing a campaign party, expecting her to be as outraged as he was, Zoe didn’t even try to feel angry. All she could think about was whether or not Grace would be there.

And she was. The warm energy of the party made Zoe feel brave, enough to walk up to her crush and say, “You haven’t returned any of my texts. I thought you were dead.”

“Nope, still alive. Just… busy.”

“So, are we still friends?”

“Don’t be an idiot. I’ll see you in class.”

Zoe held Grace’s words like a flame, small and hopeful, as fragile as Zoe’s heart felt. All she had to do was keep it alive until Monday.

The rest of the weekend dragged on. Zoe’s mother snapped her fingers in Zoe’s face at dinner, demanding to know why Zoe wasn’t paying attention. Tristan texted her _SOS_ at least three times, and while Zoe knew that she’d responded well enough to calm him down, she couldn’t remember what she’d said. On Sunday night, she went to bed early and dreamed of blue hair and pierced skin, warm against hers.

Grace wasn’t in the hallway before homeroom on Monday, nor after. Zoe chased a black t-shirt to the bathroom, but the niner it belonged to didn’t notice. Their flame was nearing embers, and Zoe couldn’t tend to it alone.

Then Grace walked into Media Immersion and slid in beside her, smile thin but warm.

The flame grew into a wildfire, and Zoe whispered _thank you_ to its burn.

**** THEN ****

The first time Grace took Zoe to the Dot, Zoe hadn’t thought it was a date. Not until Miles had appeared—“she’s hopelessly in love with you,” he’d said, with all the authority of a recently out queer dispensing wisdom to an unsuspecting closet case. Zoe had been tempted to ignore his words and match his tone, flirt in the effortless way that two flirtatious people could regardless of their actual attraction. She’d run Miles’ words over in her mind, brightening from ignorance to wonder.

For the first time, Zoe didn’t want someone to be in love with her so that she could parade that love around. No, as Miles’ words settled in her mind, Zoe wondered why she wanted Grace to be in love with her if she didn’t want to show her lover off. She wondered if that was what they would become, an experiment in bi-curiosity used to impress her other friends. But that thought quickly soured. Zoe didn’t want to turn her and Grace into a scene.

She didn’t know yet what she wanted. The thing that existed between her and Grace was still without form, yet Miles had labeled its shape: The signs of the _hopelessly in love_.

**** NOW ****

The world was Zoe’s kingdom once again. Each locker was a turret on her castle, each student a war-ready pawn. Every step she took brought her closer to the next time she saw Grace. Now that they were friends again, Grace even texted her back.

Grace had never been much of a texter. The stretches of time between messages were an exercise in patience for Zoe, who paced her responses so Grace wouldn’t think she was obsessing. It was acting, Zoe told herself, not lying. The deception had minimal impact other than to calm her nerves.

The only problem with being on top of the world was that Zoe was alone there. She told Tristan half-truths each time he asked, evaded her mother’s question of why she kept smiling at her phone. It was lonely at the top, but it had always been, and Zoe had grown comfortable there. She’d built her little castle, hired guards.

And Grace was at the top of her own world, surrounded by high walls and heads on spikes. Zoe saw it, clear as day: she was building a bridge between their castles, and Grace was waiting for her on the other side.

In the following weeks, the bridge grew. Zoe began to see details on Grace’s stone walls, small carvings that implied Grace’s care: stick figures with swords, lightning bolts, piano keys falling like dominos. Flowers bloomed through weathered cracks and faced the sun. Grace passed Zoe a note in Media Immersion and Zoe added a plank; Grace failed to text her back and she withdrew it.

Zoe knew that Grace wanted her to get there. She also knew that Grace wouldn’t make it easy. It was lucky, then, for both of them, that Zoe loved a challenge. This was the job she was made for—not destroying the walls that Grace built, but building a doorway inside them.

**

When Grace asked Zoe to work with her on the Media Immersion animation project, Zoe tried her best to be coy. “Sure,” she’d said, staring at the front of the room. “Why not.” Grace had frowned and turned away, and Zoe had thought, _I’m in_.

After that, flirting was easier. Grace threw a barb and Zoe caught it, then tossed it back softly, underhand. Each time Zoe matched Grace’s wit, she earned a smile.

One day, as Zoe poked Grace’s cheek and her piercings, their game was interrupted by a cough. It had come at the worst possible time—Grace took Zoe’s hand and held it, looked into her eyes. _This is it_ , Zoe thought, _this is happening_ , but as she let her smile lean her body forward, Grace coughed. Looking angry and a little bit sad, Grace snapped up her backpack and left.

Zoe turned around, looking incredulously at Zig and Maya wrapped together. Zoe swore she never saw them not touching—Zig’s hand was always on Maya’s back or at her waist, his chin often resting on her shoulder. It had always struck Zoe as clingy. Now, Maya’s head was in Zig’s lap, and he was looking at her like she was fragile. But Zig wasn’t scared of breaking Maya; it was their love that he worried he would lose. Zoe hoped she never looked at Grace like that.

“Grace is always going AWOL for no reason. Just chill,” Zig said.

Zoe could chill. She pulled out her phone.

“Okay, that is not chilling.”

“I’m just texting her. Maybe it wasn’t about what I said.”

It was one of many times that Zoe felt grateful for her imagination. She could visualize Grace clearly, walking hurriedly away with her backpack slung over her shoulder. The possibilities for her behavior flooded Zoe’s mind: Grace could have forgotten something in their classroom. Grace could have been rushing to meet someone. Grace could’ve really had to pee.

Despite the overwhelming reasonableness of these options, Zoe knew they weren’t the real one. She didn’t know what she’d said or done to upset Grace, but she knew she had to fix it. She decided to go to Grace’s house after school and apologize—if nothing else, it was a great excuse to see her. Maybe she’d even let Zoe come inside. Zoe could picture it clearly: Grace opening the door with a blush, giving Zoe that small smile that said she was happy to see her. Zoe imagined sitting at Grace’s kitchen table as they talked, as Grace’s blush sank into her cheeks. Zoe could even imagine leaning in to kiss her, though her fantasy stopped there. Her mind didn’t want to push past that point, saving her imagination for the memories she hoped would come.

After school, Zoe walked up to Grace’s house with purpose, talking to a skeptical Tristan on the phone.

“For the record, this is a bad idea.”

“I have to explain the hand touch wasn’t a big deal before she blows it out of proportion.” It was the excuse Zoe had chosen, held so close to her chest that it was beginning to resemble the truth. Zoe did want to make sure she hadn’t freaked Grace out. It was still hard to admit that she had a crush on a girl, and Zoe had been choosing not to dwell on the implications of that. But Grace was more thoughtful, more discerning; she spent more time with her thoughts than anyone else Zoe knew. So if Zoe was refusing to let the thought grow, Grace’s head must be a garden’s worth of weeds.

“Yeah, showing up at her house unannounced will totally send that message.”

Before Tristan’s words could sink in, Zoe hung up. She marched up Grace’s stoop and rang the doorbell.

The first part of Zoe’s fantasy fell away when someone other than Grace opened the door.

“Hi, can I help you?” This must be Grace’s mother. She had her hair.

“I’m Zoe. A friend of Grace’s.”

“Oh, um… Grace isn’t home.”

“Do you know when she’ll be back?”

“Sorry.”

Zoe sighed and walked away. She didn’t know what possessed her to take one last look at Grace’s house, but when she did, she saw a flash of blue hair in the window. As she turned her head towards the motion, she could see Grace’s hand against the glass, drawing the curtain closed.

**** THEN ****

Zoe knew how it felt for boys to love her. But girls—girls scared her. Loving a girl was too intimate, Narcissus caressing his reflection. When Zoe realized that she could love girls, she realized how big her love could be.

Already, boys had loved her. She’d seen it—the desperation in their eyes, the surety, the want. She could recognize a boy in love. She could feel what he felt, understand him. But the love of a girl was elusive, especially when that love came from herself.

Zoe knew how it felt to want a boy—she knew that obsession, that game she played to win them. She didn’t know how it felt to love them. She didn’t know how it felt to _love_ , how the word would come to life for her. She’d summoned lesser versions—for Miles, for Drew—it was fierce, and it was alienating. It wasn’t desperate or fragile, not glowing or warm. It was motivated by a desire to have, not to need—but Zoe needed Grace. She just didn’t know how to fall in love with her.

**

Smitten men were Zoe’s favorite weapons. They took orders in stride, acted as both sword and shield. When Zoe had a man on her arm, she felt protected—not physically, but in her social world. Dating Miles and Drew had been currency she’d spent, giving charitable coins to the starstruck girls on Power Cheer. They didn’t need to spend their money on gossip rags—all they needed to have was their attention on her, and Zoe would shower them in gold.

A year after Paris, Zoe hadn’t spent Miles in months. But here he was, after a dramatic relationship with Maya and the early stages of a bisexual awakening, practically begging to be used. So Zoe did, shamelessly restoring Miles to his previous position at her side. This time, he wasn’t a gateway to popularity at a new school. He was just Miles, charming and severe, a sun-drenched boy looking to lie in her shade. Once again, Zoe got the feeling that they were both using each other as distractions, a quintessential summer fling. The difference was that this time, Zoe didn’t care if it would last.

She knew that Grace would be at the Hollingsworths’ when she and Miles arrived on the day of the full moon party. Zoe and Grace had argued the previous day, when Zoe had ditched her to hang out with Miles. She wasn’t sure how Grace felt about it now.

Zoe talked to Miles about nothing, following the script she always read. And there was Grace, sitting at a table by the pool, frowning at her pen as Tristan gossiped and Hunter tried to work. Zoe tried to focus on Miles, but her eyes darted toward Grace as Zoe swung her hand in his, then leaned against him like she’d once seen Maya do.

“Can you guys please take the PDA somewhere else? We’re trying to get some work done.”

Zoe faltered. She’d expected Grace to be angry, but seeing the hurt on her face made Zoe feel both guilty and exhilarated that she’d caused such a fluster of emotion.

Zoe walked over to Grace and said, “Sorry about leaving. I’ll make it up to you.”

“Until you get a better offer from some dude and ditch me.”

“It’s not like that.”

“Of course it is. Don’t worry, I’m used to it. So let’s just stop pretending to be friends.”

“No.” Zoe leaned in, her eyes locked on Grace’s. She was excited by the anger she saw. Zoe and Grace were able to dig under each other’s skin and pull at the fragile sinew underneath, uncovering the emotions they held there. It was Zoe’s first clue that what they had was worth fighting for, that they’d each felt threatened by its absence. And when Zoe and Grace felt threatened, they lashed out.

“Come to the full moon party with me tonight,” Zoe said. If Grace wanted to pull her apart, Zoe would let her.

“Aren’t you going with Miles?” Grace said his name mockingly, but she didn’t look angry anymore. She looked unsure.

Zoe was surprised by how kind her heart was telling her to be. “We could go all together,” she said. “And if you hung out with us tonight, you’d see that he’s not the worst.”

All summer, Zoe had been making concessions. Yes, she wanted to be around Grace all the time; yes, she thought about Grace when they weren’t together. But she’d been unmaking them, too—it was just the intoxication of new friendship; it was just a friendly type of want.

This moment was more difficult to rationalize. Zoe felt manic, desperate, at the thought of Grace leaving her life. There was no one else she could be her whole self around, but Grace knew her and liked her, had been known and been liked by her.

Zoe couldn’t lose that. It was easy enough to push her nagging feelings aside and fill the space with uncertainty. The important thing was that Grace was still in Zoe’s life, her feelings preserved. The rest she could figure out later.

“Okay,” Grace said, a syringe of relief in Zoe’s veins.

“Seriously?”

“If I can leave whenever I want.”

“Deal.” Zoe smiled, satisfied. She glanced at Miles, at his sunglasses and smirk. She looked at Tristan, at his patterned shirt and patented eyeroll. She felt such affection for them. But then she looked at Grace, and Zoe noticed all of her details. The yawn of blue in her hair. The length of her eyelashes. The jut of her chin, the curve of her nose. She was smiling down at her homework, but she caught Zoe staring and stopped, angling her chair away. The gesture brought on a rush of affection that Zoe didn’t want to understand.

But she did. Despite her refusal to sound out the feeling, she could’ve won the spelling bee asleep.

It occurred to her, then, that Grace had been right, in a way.

They had been pretending to be friends.

**** NOW ****

Zoe hadn’t questioned her feelings since that night. She knew their designs, their inner parts, could recognize them from afar. Still, thinking about them directly felt like looking straight into the sun.

Instead, Zoe looked in the mirror.

If there was one thing Zoe hated about Degrassi, it was the bathrooms. They were sterile and gray, with sinks pressed together like a cityscape with skyscraper stalls. The whole room felt crowded, even when she was alone.

But Zoe loved mirrors, so she spent a lot of time in here anyway.

She was usually surprised by her reflection. She’d spend the day convinced that her makeup was overdone or that her necklace didn’t match her shirt. Then she’d look in the mirror and think, _Oh. I look fine. I look good._ And she’d celebrate by smiling at herself, admiring the glimmer of her lip gloss.

Today, though, she wasn’t smiling. She kept thinking about Grace in the window. Grace, avoiding her. Grace, asking her mother to lie so that she wouldn’t have to see her. All because Zoe had held her hand.

She’d thought she had mastered the art of flirting with Grace. She’d thought she was getting pretty good at it. For once she’d let her feelings lead the way, without a script. But she realized now why she followed scripts on West Drive, on movie sets, on dates with Miles.

When you followed a script, you knew what the other person was going to say—as long as they were following it, too.

But Grace was improv. Deadpan and quick on her feet, she always knew how to rib off another person for a laugh. The thought of Grace following anyone else’s lines was comical. Even Zoe’s.

The Zoe in the mirror looked upset. Zoe brightened her expression and rubbed eyeliner away from the dark circles under her eyes. Better. Then she washed her hands clean of the makeup she’d smudged on her fingers.

As she turned to leave, she felt confident. It didn’t matter that Grace was avoiding her. Zoe didn’t need her.

But then, Grace walked through the door.

**

From her mother to her costars, Zoe had lived on a ladder all her life. When she climbed she was rewarded, and she was punished when she fell. Only one person could fit on each rung, and she’d learned to push others off to take their place. She’d learned that in order to protect herself, she had to be above everyone else.

It was little more than instinct that made her say cruel words to Grace that day. She coated her lips with venom, her words imbued with it. The meaner she was, the safer she felt. And Grace, who’d seen Zoe’s vulnerable side and hated her now, made Zoe feel especially unsafe.

“Hi,” Grace said.

“Oh, so now you wanna talk to me.”

Grace at least had the decency to look bashful. “I finished the backgrounds for our project.”

“I’m sure you had lots of free time at home last night. Are you seriously just gonna stand there and pretend like nothing happened?”

Grace coughed, then covered her mouth with her wrist. “You—you don’t know the whole story.”

“What’s the whole story? That you’re such an emotionally damaged psycho, you can’t even handle one little touch?”

Zoe knew she was being cruel. She wanted to be crueler. She was grasping for a rung at the bottom of the ladder, preparing to ascend.

Grace’s coughing worsened. She put her hands on either side of the sink and coughed into the basin. Zoe’s anger drained away with the color on Grace’s cheeks, leaving both girls pale. Zoe moved closer to Grace and saw splotches of red against white.

“Oh my god. Is that blood? I’m calling 911.”

“You don’t have to call an ambulance.” Grace paused, her voice pleading. “Can you just take me home?”

Zoe nodded, wrapping an arm around Grace and leading her out of the bathroom.

She didn’t have time to feel guilty about her harsh words. Seeing Grace in a state of need had evaporated Zoe’s anger. Simply put, Zoe was willing to sacrifice her instincts for Grace. She was willing to sacrifice control.

Grace understood Zoe’s hardened edges just as Zoe understood hers. Grace was coughing blood; she didn’t need apologies. Forgiveness wouldn’t lead to salvation. Her fingers pressed into Grace’s arm, panic rummaging through her heart’s cavities, Zoe wondered why she’d spent so much of her life pushing the good parts out of it.

What a luxury it was, to choose how to unravel.

**

Just as Zoe’s instincts were her weapons, her cruelty acted as armor. She had forged that armor on set, to protect herself from leering directors and jealous costars. Though Zoe didn’t know this in the bathroom, Grace’s armor had been forged by foreign hands. Faceless doctors and nurses and specialists and surgeons had fit pieces onto her body, then taken them away again. Grace had been salvaging those pieces for years, used homemade glue to hold them, unsure for how long they would fit.

Zoe had never before been tempted to take hers off, but now she wanted Grace to see her bare. More than that, she wanted to give her security to Grace, though she knew Grace would never accept it. The wildness of Grace’s patchwork armor could never be contained by Zoe’s gold.

It was difficult for Zoe to notice those cracks, to see that Grace was in pain. They had both spent such time, such effort, thickening their metal coats. Zoe had perfected verbal takedowns, while Grace had mastered the art of being rude. They were safe inside that armor, mean comments repelling those who got too close, so no one would see the fragile girls hidden within.

So when Grace’s armor shattered with the force of her blood-laden cough, all Zoe could do was gather the fragments in her hands and give them back.

**

Zoe brought Grace home and listened to her mother’s explanation. Grace had been right—Zoe hadn’t known the whole story.

“Grace has cystic fibrosis.”

Harsher words than Zoe ever could’ve thought to say. “Cystic… fibrosis… But,” she chuckled nervously, “not the one that kills you, right?”

Grace exhaled. She was lying in bed on her side, facing away from Zoe. She was using an inhaler, her mother beside her, rubbing her back. “There’s only one kind.”

“But… when she’s old, right? Not like, soon, or now, or anything.”

Grace’s mom frowned, then gave a sad smile. “We’re keeping an eye on it. And we’ve got a great team to make sure that Grace stays healthy. Lots of people with CF live well into their thirties. And with more and more therapies and medicines being developed… there’s no reason to believe that she won’t make it into her fifties.”

Zoe left the house on autopilot. Back at home, she sidestepped her mother and locked herself in her bedroom. At her desk, she opened her laptop and typed _Cystic Fibrosis_ into Google.

> **Cystic fibrosis** is a hereditary disease that affects the lungs  
>  and digestive system. **Cystic fibrosis (CF)** can be life-  
>  threatening, and people with the condition tend to have a  
>  shorter-than-normal life span.

Zoe sucked in a breath, then searched _Cystic Fibrosis cure_.

> There's currently no cure for cystic fibrosis.

For the rest of the evening and well into the night, Zoe foraged the Internet. She found forums and subreddits, people with no medical backgrounds sharing tips and tricks that had helped. Around three a.m., she realized that the people on these forums never had CF themselves. Their loved ones did.

Zoe shut her laptop.

Soon after, she crawled into bed and allowed herself to name everything she felt. She thought of Grace lying on her bed, inhaler pressed to her lips, her mother rubbing circles on her back. _Scared_. She thought about Grace in the window shoving the curtains closed— _angry_ —and what she must have been dealing with, the pain she must have felt. _Sad_. She thought about earlier that week, flirting with Grace in the common area—had Grace coughed before she’d walked away? She had, hadn’t she? _Stupid. I feel stupid._

On top of those emotions sat her guilt, dangling its legs. Zoe’s crush felt so small. While she’d been pining and overanalyzing, Grace had been in pain.

Zoe thought about that phrase, _in pain_. It wasn’t a feeling, but a state. Grace was _in_ pain, just as Zoe was _in_ love. Zoe wondered if pain was overwhelming Grace the way that love was overwhelming her. The thought made her feel vaguely ill.

But Grace had also been hiding her illness. Before anger could shove its way back up Zoe’s throat, she took a breath. That wasn’t important anymore. It didn’t matter that Grace hadn’t trusted her with the truth. What mattered was how Zoe could help.

Zoe ran over what she’d learned in her head. Experimental cures. Vitamin-rich smoothies. Tangible things that she could do to make Grace’s life better. She gave a half-hearted effort to repress the last of her romantic inclinations, but her crush and her guilt held hands. Finally Zoe gave in, in the privacy of her own mind, to her less savory thoughts: _Maybe if I find a cure, Grace will love me._

It didn’t make Zoe feel good. But that wasn’t her goal. Her goal was to indulge in the tatters of her fantasies, to wrap them around her like gauze. She didn’t know what would happen the next time she saw Grace. All she knew was that she wanted to protect her. She wanted Grace to be okay. And once everything was better, she wanted to kiss her again.

**

The next day at school, Zoe held onto the smoothie she’d made and the knowledge she’d learned and waited for Grace on the roof. Wind blew her hair across her face, obstructing it from view. Zoe thought this was fitting. She wasn’t here to be herself today.

It didn’t stop her from thinking, _If I wanted to tell Grace that I loved her, I would want to do it here._

If Zoe had gone to the top of the school to tell Grace how she felt, she would’ve said something like this: _You make me feel everything I’ve ever felt before. I feel overwhelmed at the idea of you. You have such power over me, but you don’t wield it. I don’t doubt that you love me, but I doubt the way you do. I tried to convince myself that you loved me as a friend, unconditionally. But I’m afraid that being in love with you is a condition. One that will change things between us. I worry that if I’m in love with you and you love me as a friend, the earth will shift and I’ll fall through its cracks. That if we’re on different pages, we won’t read each other’s. That you won’t want to read mine._

_I love you, Grace. I want to be with you. But that feeling doesn’t matter when I think about your life. I want you to live. You need to. Please, do it for me._

Zoe heard the unmistakable _crunch_ of footsteps on gravel and turned to see Grace walking toward her.

“You got my text,” Zoe said. “I thought we should talk.”

Grace sighed, pushing her own hair out of her face. “On the roof of the school?”

Zoe shrugged. “I thought you’d want privacy.”

“About yesterday—”

“No need to explain. I was up all night researching. If you ever want to talk about anything, I’m here.” Zoe held out the smoothie.

Grace took it. “What’s this?”

“Green smoothie with ginseng, clove, and cinnamon, all of which are super anti-bacterial, to help fight off those lung infections.”

Grace rolled her eyes and handed the smoothie back to Zoe. “This won’t do anything.”

Zoe hadn’t expected that. “Have you heard about that crazy new drug? People with CF who take it are living into their seventies.”

“It’s for a different genetic mutation. It won’t work for me.”

“Well, there are lots of alternative therapies. I mean, I personally think that hot yoga is disgusting, but—”

“Stop it! You say you wanna talk?”

“I—I do.”

“But not about how I’m going to die before thirty-five. About how there’s no point in anything because I’ve got one foot in the grave.”

Zoe had never seen Grace this angry. During all of their arguments, Grace had been eye-rolling, arms-crossed mad. But now she was yelling mad.

It struck Zoe then how real this was. Grace’s illness didn’t exist in the tabs on Zoe’s laptop, it existed here, inside Grace. It felt like it was Grace. That the Grace Zoe knew was a mirage, and this illness, this death sentence, was personified before her.

It was nonsense, of course. Zoe could see the Grace she fell in love with in the furrow of her brow, the darkness of her clothing, the stud resting under her lip. Still, Zoe wondered if Grace had ever felt like she and her illness were one and the same.

This sparked an idea.

“With what you’re up against, it probably feels like everything is pointless.”

“You’re finally getting it.”

Zoe walked to the edge of the roof and looked down. Then she whipped herself around, arms swinging. “So jump.”

“What?”

“You’ve already decided that your life is over. You could have twenty more years, but you’ve already given up. You’re basically dead, so you might as well just kill yourself.”

Grace rolled her eyes and sighed. She walked over to Zoe and said, “You know… I think you’re right.”

“I am?”

“You’ve given me a new lease on life.” She locked onto Zoe’s eyes. “I think I’ll go to med school and dedicate my life to curing CF!”

“I was just trying to prove that you’ve got stuff to live for!”

“Shut up!” Grace ran her fingers through her hair, then gestured outwards. “My whole life has been people telling me to stay positive. Everyone wants to talk about insane miracle cures, but no one wants to talk about how I’m going to die!”

“Because maybe you won’t!”

“Because people can’t handle it!” Grace moved closer, then broke eye contact. “In middle school, I was hospitalized for a month. In the beginning, people came to see me. But by the end? Nothing!”

Zoe felt tears start to form. She didn’t know what to say. She thought of Grace—tinier, younger, perhaps even optimistic—waiting, alone, in a hospital room. Wondering where her friends were. Wondering what was wrong with her, why they hated her now. Zoe wanted to think that if she’d been Grace’s friend back then, she would’ve kept coming. She would’ve stayed by her side. But she knew better. She knew her twelve-year-old self, that child’s nonchalance and self-absorption. If a childhood friend had been in the hospital, Zoe wouldn’t have gone.

“That’s awful.”

“This is why I don’t do relationships. Hard to commit when you’re one lung infection away from the end.”

The selfish part of Zoe latched onto Grace’s words. Did she mean that without her CF, she would do relationships? Was she trying to say that without her CF, she’d be with Zoe?

Grace continued. “I’ve just accepted that there won’t be anyone at my funeral.”

This, of all things, made Zoe cry. The idea that she—or Maya, Zig, and Tiny—wouldn’t attend Grace’s funeral was maddening. It meant that Zoe hadn’t shown her love enough. She thought of all the moments she’d downplayed her feelings for Grace, hoping that she wouldn’t come off as potently enamored as she was. All this time, Zoe had been hiding something that Grace may have desperately needed.

“Don’t say that.”

“Why not? It’s the truth. People just can’t deal. I guess I thought you were different.”

As Grace stormed away, Zoe felt the full weight of her words. How could she have thought that a smoothie and hot yoga would solve anything? Grace was going to die. Zoe’s best friend, her other half, would die before her. Years before her. Decades.

Zoe’s future fantasy transformed. The house they’d shared became a morgue. Their children turned into black cats, yellow eyes fixed on Zoe’s sobs, and then disappeared. Their sun-spilled suburbia withered, decrepit in their absence, because Zoe couldn’t live in a Graceless future, either. And the wedding Zoe dreamed of, with her elegant dress and fine china and full orchestra, faded into a funeral.

Zoe collapsed to the ground and felt pebbles poke into her knees. She should’ve known better than to dream.

**** THEN ****

When you kiss the girl you love for the first time, you don’t know everything about her. You know that she’s quick-witted and good at school, that she knows computers the way you know films. You know the parts of her that make your heart pound, but you don’t know that she’s guarded because she is going to die.

“I’m sorry for calling you names. And for acting like a total idiot.” They were on the beach at summer’s end, the ocean twinkling behind them. Zoe was thinking of how weird it was to see Grace dressed in white.

“We don’t have to do this. We can accept that we’re not meant to be friends.”

Zoe took a deep breath and sighed. “You are the most frustrating person I have ever met. You make fun of me all the time, you tell me I’m wrong, you—you see the real me. The girl I try so hard to hide, and… you like her.”

“I’m sure other people would too.”

“Sometimes you make me feel so special, and… I’m scared that if I lose you, I’ll never feel that way again.” And Zoe kissed her.

Grace was surprised. Zoe figured that she’d caught her off guard, that maybe Grace hadn’t worked through her feelings the way Zoe had. But she didn’t doubt that they were there. Zoe remembered their self-defense lessons, Grace jumping on her back and falling over, that perfect summer day. She remembered lying in the back of Bane’s truck, a rough cotton blanket thrown around them, her hand holding Grace’s, a lifeline. She remembered wondering if they were going to die. Now, as Zoe looked back at this memory, she knew why Grace hadn’t been as scared as her—Grace knew she was going to die. The shock had already been absorbed.

The Zoe at the beach broke the kiss. “Don’t say anything. I’ve rushed things before and I don’t want to rush this. School starts in a week, let’s talk then.”

Zoe walked away, feeling like the epitome of suave. She thought about their futures entwined—going to university in the same city, living together in a cozy one-bedroom, maybe with a small dog or a cat. She thought about mornings and weekends lying on Grace’s lap, her fingers in Zoe’s hair, completely at peace.

The way Zoe felt in that moment was promise incarnate, a fantasy based on the real. Zoe remembered the kiss and remembered it again, played it on a loop before she forgot the small parts—Grace’s hair, a whisper against Zoe’s chin; the wind rushing around their lips as if it were the sea and they a rock, solid and sure. The press of Grace’s lips on hers was already fading, but Zoe would have that memory forever—if not the thing itself, then the truth of it. Zoe had kissed the girl she loved, and that would always be a part of her. It would always be true.

****EPILOGUE - NOW****

Zoe was certain that Grace would love what she’d done with their animation project for Media Immersion. She’d been smirking to herself all day, tense with anticipation, jittery like she’d drank a whole venti. She was almost glad that Grace was late to class, until Ms. Grell called on them to present.

Zoe’s head shot toward her teacher. She couldn’t present without Grace. She opened her mouth, excuses ready on her tongue. Before she had the chance, Grace rushed into the room and sat beside Zoe, her arms crossed over her chest.

“So we’re taking an F on this?”

“Not quite.” Zoe stood up and addressed the class. “The future is uncertain. Who knows where we’ll be in fifteen years? Statistically, one person in this room will be in prison…”

Grace laughed. “My money’s on Zig.”

“…and two will be dead.” Zoe glanced down at Grace. The smile had slipped off her face. “Given her badass lifestyle, I assume Grace will be one of these people.”

Zoe clicked the animation on. A gravestone rushed onto the screen—

 **RIP GRACE**  
“I never liked you anyway.”

—and thunder rumbled in the background. The animation zoomed out to show Zoe, in a black minidress and elaborate headpiece, crying in front of the grave. “Here’s me wearing vintage Valentino at her funeral.”

Grace let out a small laugh.

“All right, um… thank you, Zoe,” said Ms. Grell. As she continued to talk, Grace leaned over to Zoe’s side of the table.

“You don’t suck as much as most people.”

Zoe smiled at the words, at the affection in Grace’s tone. She hoped it was enough to start again.


End file.
